


Freefall

by SylverFletcher



Category: Hermitcraft, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Flying, Gen, Grian's perspective, Hermitcraft - Freeform, No Dialogue, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Showing Off, the hermits are impressed by their flying buddy, winged Grian au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 22:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19710430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylverFletcher/pseuds/SylverFletcher
Summary: In an AU in which Grian spawned with real wings at the very start of Hermitcraft, he slowly learns how to use them and fly without incident. The rest of the Hermits see the entire progression from failure to master flyer; and they really can't resist gathering together to watch Grian fly once he's gotten the hang of it.Grian, of course, can't resist showing off his skills.





	Freefall

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I've binged the first like 55 episodes of Hermitcraft in a week and I am HOOKED ok like I've been subbed to Grian for years and he's great but I never knew how much of a little shit he was and I absolutely love it

The sky was where he belonged.

The rush of the wind in his ears, through his feathers; the feeling of soaring higher with each powerful stroke of his wings, the weightless sensation of arcing and gliding down wherever he wanted. It was where he felt most at home, it was where he left his problems on the ground and escaped for as long as the air would carry him.

They made fun of him at first, the other Hermits. It was all in good fun, of course; they’d never be cruel to him on purpose. But they teased him when they’d first arrived here, when he was the newest member and his wings had been a blind discovery to all of them. That included him - he’d never had wings before, not ever, but upon opening his eyes in this new world, there they were. Plain as day, white feathers shining in the sun, no one could miss them.

He was ecstatic, of course. Absolutely over the moon at the prospect of being able to fly wherever he wanted, to lift himself into the air while building, to swoop in and be gone before his pranks were ever discovered. That is to say, he was too excited to be careful. That’s where the teasing came from; the first thing he ever did with his new wings was fling himself off a cliff before he figured out how to actually move them.

He hadn’t heard the end of it for weeks.

But now, now things were different. He’d stuck with them, despite that absolutely atrocious first attempt that ended with him reawakening right back with the others on the cliff, with nothing to prove anything had happened to him at all save for the dull phantom ache of having fallen to his death. Determined and a bit too stubborn for his own good, he’d kept at it until he got it right. He sat still for hours on end, focusing on just learning how to move his newfound limbs, getting comfortable until they had become as natural as his hands. Only  _ then _ had he taken to the skies again; and he did it over the ocean, just in case.

It didn’t stop him from crashing face first into Mumbo’s floor a few days later, because he underestimated the force behind his speed; but it was a start.

After all that, after weeks upon weeks of teasing and startled respawning moments after breaking his own neck, it was all different. No one made fun of him now, not when he could fly laps around them in their Elytras and rockets, when he could weave the tightest turns through the entire shopping district without clipping a single block, when he could leave the others far in the dust from the speeds he alone could achieve. And, most importantly of all, when he was now skilled enough to  _ not _ constantly experience kinetic energy.

Even now, Grian was well and fully aware of the audience he had to his flying. Though he was just out to stretch his wings and feel free, to clear his mind of the build that wasn’t going how he wanted it to, it was hard to miss the figures sat in various places on the cliffs facing his base. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the way their heads turned and tilted to follow him each time he rose and fell, each time he swooped and dove and twisted. While normally he’d get nervous being watched, overthinking anything else he did and wondering what they were thinking, flying was different. With flying, it was all muscle memory and instinct, he couldn’t overthink it because there was no time to think at all before he had to move again.

He wasn’t nervous at all. No, quite on the contrary, the slowly growing audience did nothing more than give a spike to his ego and plaster a smirk onto his face. And not for the first time, he couldn’t help deciding to give them a show.

The wind whipped and grabbed at his sweater as he turned suddenly, twisting out of his relaxed gliding. The ocean stretched out far around him, the depth of the water meaning he didn’t have to worry about the split second of agonizing pain if he messed up and fell to his death again. More than a little emboldened, Grian took a second to flex his shoulders, and then up he went.

Flapping his wings hard enough that they nearly met their twin at every high and low point of their movements, he soared higher and higher, turning the ocean waves to a vague blue blur and causing the figures on the cliff to turn their heads up to keep him in sight. Then he twisted sharply, barrel rolling his entire body to the side and letting his wings follow in a spiral around him as he went, before twisting out of it and back upright as quickly as he’d gotten into it. From below, there were a few hushed  _ oo’s _ and  _ ah’s _ , though whether they were hushed on purpose or just because of the wind he couldn’t tell. And oh, he was just getting started, as they would soon see.

For a moment, Grian considered what he could do next. He hadn’t planned on showing off today, but it was just so fun to see the awe on his fellow Hermits’ faces, and soon he had an idea. It was a trick he’d been practicing, one he hadn’t completely mastered yet; but if he pulled it off this time, it would be more than worth it.

Twisting his trajectory around, the winged Hermit turned in midair until he was slowly gliding directly away from the cliff his friends watched from. He chuckled silently to himself, thinking that if they hadn’t realized he knew they were there yet, they would soon. Then he beat his wings hard again, turning his body directly vertical in the sky, and kept going beyond that. As he flew in a wide loop, he watched as the horizons swapped in his vision, the ground became the sky and the sky became the ground. Breathing deeply, he fought to keep his internal sense of gravity from going haywire and making him dizzy, and tried not to think too hard about the ground being above his head.

Now, he was still gliding, but he was both upside down  _ and _ gliding toward his friends. As he drew closer he could clearly see their faces, half of them with their jaws just about on the ground, and he winked at them as he flew right over their heads. If he didn’t know any better, he almost thought he felt one of his wings brush against something, and hoped he hadn’t accidentally hit any of them in the head.

Then he realized this would be the hard part. It was hard enough to get upside down without losing his sense of equilibrium in the first place, but now that he’d flown over the ground and had less space to maneuver, it would be even harder to get back upright again without crashing. And like this, he couldn’t actually gather enough air under the backside of his wings or move them correctly anyway in order to gain height again.

He hadn’t thought this through, had he?

There were some shouts of concern, but Grian was determined to figure a graceful way out of this. Though the shouting was mostly based on telling him to  _ not _ crash into the tree he was gliding right toward, the small part of his mind that liked to come up with terrible ideas that could  _ maybe _ work was telling him to use it to advantage.

And, of course, Grian didn’t have much of a habit of ignoring that part of his mind. So it was to almost no one’s surprise that he didn’t take the fall and just land a little ungracefully on the ground, or at least roll out of the path of the tree, or anything; no, instead he flipped forward again, just in time for his feet to meet the trunk of the tree instead of his face.

And then, instead of just letting his momentum die and fall to the grass, he pushed off with his feet as hard as he could while flapping his wings hard to grab air and gain altitude again. Miraculously, it worked; and from the perspective of all the Hermits right under him as he flew back out over the water, it looked completely smooth and intentional. While the cliff erupted from its previous worried shouting into some impressed hollering, Grian flew higher and higher, using his wings to push himself further and further straight upward with each beat.

Because, of course; he wasn’t done yet.

Up and up the builder went, up to where he could feel his wings cut right through the thin wisps of clouds, and then higher still; past the tallest height of his base, further still until it felt like nothing existed but him, the sky, and the sun. The others could still see him, he knew, since there were no substantial clouds to hide him from view this high up.

It was perfect.

Finally, feeling like he’d reached a height he was happy with, Grian stopped pushing higher into the sky. All at once, he let his whole body go slack, falling limp like a ragdoll. For just a split second before the momentum from his last push ended, he felt weightless; the sun seemed close enough to touch, the air felt so still, it felt as if everything had stopped. Then he was falling.

The air  _ roared _ in his ears as he gained speed, and he felt his body shift in the air until he was looking up at the sky, his toes and the tips of his wings, while his upper back faced the closest to the ocean far below. He could have been worried, or scared; his heart could have raced from panic and adrenaline, his body could have stiffened against his will from a need for safety. But this was where he belonged; the sky was his home, it was where he had always been meant to be. And his wings, they were a part of him, a part of him he’d never known he was missing.

He wasn’t afraid of the ground. He wasn’t afraid of gravity.

He wasn’t afraid to  _ soar. _

There was shouting from the cliff again, and Grian slowly closed his eyes, breathing out. His breath was swept away by the rushing wind, the sun still beat down through his eyelids, and he could hear his friends’ yelling change from being below him to above him instead. He could smell the ocean.

He counted down.

Three.

Two.

_ One. _

His eyes snapped open at the same time that he flipped his body, spinning midair until he was facing the ocean. Snapping his previously limp wings out to either side and holding them strong against the intense air trying to push them backward, Grian held firm to his narrow window to escape from his descent safely. And just as he had guessed, from the sound of his friends on the cliff and his memory of the space from the cliff to the surface of the ocean, he had judged the moment to pull up perfectly. His momentum and fight with gravity slowed just in time for him to glide safely away over the waves, close enough that he could touch the surface and leave a spray of seawater in his wake.

In the distance, as he flew away to disappear again within his base, he could hear his friends cheering.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written a minecraft or youtuber fic since 2012 what is happening


End file.
